2013 BAFTA Nominations Announced

As the excitement for movie awards season hots up BAFTA have announced the nominations for their 2013 awards. Due to be held 10 February, the BAFTAs come a full two weeks before the Academy Awards ceremony, held this year on the 24 February.

Steven Spielberg‘s biopic Lincoln receives the most nods this year, achieving an impressive ten nominations. The film will be released 25 January here in the UK and its impressive list of nominations here forecasts a warm reception at the Oscars. Tom Hooper‘s Les Misérables has also received a cool nine nominations. Hooper is a man probably most famous for his hugely successful biopic The King’s Speech, a film that won seven BAFTAs back in 2011. His name is, however, missing from the list of nominations for Best Director.

Nominated for best film are Argo, Life of Pi and Zero Dark Thirty, as well as the aforementioned Lincoln and Les Misérables. Conspicuous by its absence is Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. After enjoying unprecedented success with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Jackson this time finds his movie, the first installment in a Hobbit trilogy, nominated for awards in the sound, special effects and make-up and hair categories.

BAFTA is, of course, largely concerned with homegrown produce. The 2013 nominations for Outstanding British Film are Anna Karenina, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Les Misérables, Seven Psychopaths and Skyfall. With James Bond’s latest outing proving to be a firm audience favourite, a fact sustained by its impressive box office success, quickly becoming the biggest movie in the UK ever, it will be interesting to see how Sam Mendes‘s Skyfall will do come February. It’s no secret that BAFTA enjoy the Bond films – last year their awards ceremony opened with a celebratory Bond performance involving Tom Jones and a Bond montage.

Whilst some of the nominations announced today come as no surprise, there are a few intriguing inclusions and omissions. Other films notably absent from the list of best film nominations include Quentin Tarantino‘s Django Unchained and Paul Thomas Anderson‘s The Master whilst the inclusion of Martin McDonagh‘s Seven Psychopaths in the Outstanding British Film nominations may disappoint fans of cult hit Sightseers who hoped to see the film nominated for the award. Berberian Sound Studio is also ignored in the lists. Unsurprisingly, last year’s blockbuster hits are absent from many of the categories, but Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight Rises and Joss Whedon‘s Avengers Assemble both receive nods for their special effects.

Much interest is also shown in EE’s Rising Star Award. This year the nominees are Elizabeth Olsen, Andrea Riseborough, Suraj Sharma, Juno Temple and Alicia Vikander. Previous winners include James McAvoy, Eva Green, Kristen Stewart and Tom Hardy. The winner of this category is chosen by the public.

What do you think of the nominations? Let us know in the comments section! The full list of nominations can be found below: